


Practice Makes Perfect

by thedevilchicken



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Facial Shaving, Getting Together, Hand Jobs, M/M, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:33:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23956174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: It started with a simple enough assertion: McCullum looked him in the eye and said, "That doesn't work on me, leech."
Relationships: Geoffrey McCullum/Jonathan Reid
Comments: 5
Kudos: 164
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	Practice Makes Perfect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



It started with a simple enough assertion: McCullum looked him in the eye and said, "That doesn't work on me, leech." 

They'd been sitting in Jonathan's room in the hospital for three quarters of an hour by that point in the night, discussing Jonathan's powers and cataloguing them in a way that made him feel oddly as if both scientist and specimen, when the topic of mesmerism had reared its ugly head. It was Jonathan who'd brought it up, against his better judgement, primarily because McCullum thus far hadn't and Jonathan knew the ability was far from being unique to him - the events that had caused his path to cross with Geoffrey McCullum's weren't so far in the past that he didn't recall the unfortunate affair of Carina Billow, after all. Nine or ten months had passed since then - he hadn't thought to note the dates - and he suspected Ms. Billow and her rats would be present in his memory for some time to come. 

"It's the same as anything else is," McCullum told him. He was lounging on Jonathan's rather dismal ex-ward bed, which was considerably better than any he'd slept on during the war but also considerably worse than any other he'd slept on outside of it. He'd made himself at home just as usual, though with a theatrically wary edge demonstrated primarily by tinkering with his crossbow and glancing in Jonathan's direction every now and then, as if reminding them both he had his eye on him. His long coat was draped over the end of the bed and his feet were on the blanket, boots and all, which Jonathan assumed was a gesture calculated to irritate. He'd become used to it over the past few months, however, and had been ignoring it completely since McCullum's arrival that evening. He was sitting on a high stool at his workbench across the room with his back half-turned and his hands busy, which made ignoring it even simpler. 

McCullum trailed off mid-thought. Of course, he likely only _appeared_ to have done so; sometimes it was very much like he did it for effect, so that Jonathan would have to pay closer attention. Whether or not McCullum had realised at any point during the previous months that Jonathan's attention could hardly have been more focused...well, that was one of life's many mysteries.

"Oh?" Jonathan said, apparently intrigued enough to play along. He turned around and folded his hands together. 

"Yeah. Some of you are better at it than others." He leaned over and put the book down on the floor with the scrap of paper Jonathan had been using as a bookmark sitting on top rather than marking his page. "That's why it's the first thing we teach: never look a leech in the eye, you never know if he'll have it in him or not." 

"So, is that why you don't look at me?" Jonathan asked. "Are you concerned I might bend Priwen's mighty leader to my will and make you remove your boots from my blanket?"

That was what did it, Jonathan supposes. McCullum looked at him from where he was lounging. McCullum met his gaze steadily and he said, "That doesn't work on me, leech. It hasn't worked in years."

Jonathan didn't point out the fact that seemed to mean it had worked in the past, though the thought was both alarming and intriguing, and if asked he wouldn't have denied a certain interest in hearing the story behind it. But what he said was, "Are you sure? You said it yourself: some of us are better at it than others."

"So, you think you're something special?"

"I could say the same of you."

"I've had a lot of practice."

"Have you practiced lately?"

McCullum frowned. He narrowed his eyes. He rubbed his prickly chin. Then he turned his hands palms up and shrugged broadly. "Go on, then," he said. "Give it a try. You'll be disappointed."

So, he did try. Perhaps it wasn't the most intelligent thing that Jonathan had done in his tenure at Pembroke, and he wasn't entirely certain why he'd pseudo-suggested it in the first place, but he was interested to try. So he leaned forward, his hands pressed flat against his thighs, whilst still looking McCullum directly in the eye. He had rather nice ones, as far as eyes went; Jonathan found his perception of such things had been rather skewed by the number of shrapnel wounds he'd seen on the continent.

"Geoffrey, please take your feet off the bed," he said.

McCullum smiled broadly. He leaned back and he stepped his dirty outdoor feet all over the middle of the blanket. 

"Is that the best you can do?" he asked. "It didn't even tickle." 

Jonathan knew, in point of fact, that it was not the best he could do. It was _far_ from the best he could do. He considered letting it drop and going back to his work and letting McCullum believe he'd done what he could, but the irritating fool still had that smug smile plastered across his prickly face and had widened his eyes to mocking proportions. And so Jonathan carefully, consciously, gathered his will. 

" _Get your feet off the bed_ ," he said, with a gravity to it that had been wholly absent the first time he'd tried. McCullum swung his legs over the side of the bed and put his feet down on the shabby linoleum floor. His mouth opened and closed like he was searching for words that wouldn't come and Jonathan frowned at him. The expression on McCullum's face wasn't one he'd seen there before, and he honestly couldn't say he'd ever found him lost for words. 

"Did you do that because I told you to or because you're mocking me?" Jonathan asked. 

"Because you told me to," McCullum said, looking utterly appalled by the entire notion. It was a little difficult to say if that was actually the truth, however, bearing in mind McCullum's sometimes tasteless sense of humour that came usually at Jonathan's expense. So, he considered a test; he could have him cluck his way around the room like a chicken, cut his shabby excuse for a coat into tiny little pieces with the pinking shears Jonathan had found in his second-hand desk, shave his head...which was when it struck him. He smiled. He stood. 

"Come here, Geoffrey," he said. He patted the seat of the stool he'd just vacated and McCullum rose, eyeing him uncertainly, and made his way across the room. "Sit down." McCullum hopped up onto the stool. "Stay there. I'll only be a moment." 

He left him sitting there and went to one of his storage cupboards. The room was neater then than it had been when he'd arrived at Pembroke, everything in its place just like in the field hospitals, clean and orderly though McCullum had developed an irritating habit of moving things about the room while he wasn't looking, or while he wasn't there. He supposed he did that to irritate him, too.

Jonathan knew he let himself in sometimes, usually the result of a short climb up from the street outside but he'd become a regular enough visitor over the months since Edgar's sudden disappearance that no one found it strange when he wandered the halls and let himself into Dr. Reid's perpetually locked office. They likely assumed he had a key; he didn't, as it happened. He was just rather adept in the picking of locks and Jonathan had found he didn't mind him doing so. He wasn't sure how he'd found his way in that evening, however. He'd just been there, sitting on his bed with his shoes still on just as they always were, losing Jonathan's place in the book he was reading - it was currently Elisabeth's copy of _Dracula_ that she'd sent to his house when she'd left the country. He couldn't say he liked it and had actually been considering returning it to Charlotte, so he wasn't too perturbed by having lost his page.

He found what he was looking for and returned to the stool with the supplies he'd gathered that he placed on the workbench behind McCullum. Then he ran a bowl of hot water from the tap over the sink and placed that there, too. McCullum frowned at him. He eyed him warily, still sitting there on the stool. And then Jonathan took off his jacket and rolled up both his sleeves as if he planned to perform surgery. That fact didn't seem to escape McCullum, who looked at him like he half expected him to open his chest with both hands, or at least a rather large knife.

He lathered McCullum's face. He did it slowly, working the lather in his palm and then smoothing the foam over the three-day stubble at his cheeks, and his chin, and down his neck almost to the collar of his shirt, which he soon realised was in the way and so he told him to take off his neckcloth and pat his collar down out of the way. McCullum complied, with a look on his face very much like he'd have rather jumped out of the nearest window than do so, but he did. And Jonathan unfolded the blade of his straight razor out of its mother-of-pearl handle. McCullum eyeballed it uncertainly. 

"I'd stay very still if I were you," Jonathan said, and then he shuffled just a fraction closer as he raised the blade up toward McCullum's face. He almost expected him to laugh and say the joke was up and Jonathan could get away from him with his fucking razor; what did he think he was, a barber or a surgeon? But all McCullum did was clamp his hands white-knuckled at his own thighs and clench his jaw so tightly it looked like it hurt. When McCullum looked at him, it was as if this was all precisely as it seemed: Jonathan had control of him. As if Jonathan had _complete_ control of him. It was a heady thing. The idea of it made Jonathan's pulse throb. Perhaps it hadn't turned out to be quite the amusing affair he'd intended, but he realised he also had no intention of stopping.

He shaved him. He did that slowly, too - he took his time, making each draw of the blade's edge over McCullum's skin very neat and very precise, an economy of motion that he liked to practice in his surgery so perhaps the two skills were not quite so removed from one another as all that. Or perhaps he'd just read too many of his grandfather's old penny dreadfuls when he was a child, much to his mother's chagrin; who knew when one might encounter a barber with a very thorough knowledge of human anatomy indeed, particularly about the throat. 

But he took his time, listening to the rasp of the blade against McCullum's thick stubble, turning his head this way and that with the fingertips of his free hand. He could feel the warmth of McCullum's skin; his own skin leeched it, which he supposed was apt. He could feel McCullum's pulse, too, without even attempting to. He could feel the motion when he swallowed, when his jaw unclenched a fraction just to clench again and his eyes flicked up to look at him, his pupils wide and his jaw set. And he understood McCullum's concern - he had a vampire in front of him with a sharp steel blade to his throat, a vampire who would know precisely where to put that blade for maximum effect, a vampire who would know precisely where to put that blade to make it last for hours, until he'd been bled almost completely dry. Even if he hadn't meant to, he could have slipped and nicked the skin and found himself in some kind of unexpected blood frenzy, which McCullum liked to harp on about as if Jonathan had ever even thought about biting him when he'd helped stitch up the occasional wound. Perhaps he'd licked his fingers clean afterwards, yes, but that was hardly the same thing. Even McCullum hadn't been able to claim it was.

He shaved him. Then he stepped away and he rinsed the blade, and he patted down McCullum's face with a nice clean towel, and he took a moment to apply a little balm to his smoothly-shaved skin, which he thought was a particularly nice touch. Except when he finished, as he was standing there between McCullum's wide-spread thighs with his fingertips still lingering against his face, oddly intimate, he realised how quickly McCullum's heart was beating. He realised how warm his cheeks were against his cool skin. He saw the look in his eyes, and he couldn't say he believed it was purely concern. Especially not when his gaze drifted down to the noticeable bulge in the front of McCullum's tatty trousers. 

He was so close to McCullum that had he moved his right hand six inches to the left, his palm would have settled over his clothed erection. He was so close that he could smell the balm on his skin and the pomade in his hair and the barest hint of apple cider on his breath that he'd likely had a mouthful of before he'd let himself into the office. He could smell his blood in his veins and he could see it, accidentally, slipping into that strange Ekon vision that had, as it happened, been so useful to his work in the hospital. He could see the blood pumping through him, and precisely where it was pumping to.

"Did I ask for that?" Jonathan asked him. 

McCullum grimaced. "No," he replied. 

"Then could you explain?" And McCullum opened his mouth to do precisely that, but Jonathan thought better of it. He raised one hand and cut him off, despite the fact he knew how much he would have liked to hear that explanation. He stepped back. He very nearly stumbled back, but he caught himself in time.

"Don't," he said. "You don't have to say a word. You don't have to follow any more of my instructions." He took another step back, this time a fraction more steadily. He laced his fingers together and pressed his palms against his chest, as if erecting an odd type of barrier between them, then scratched his neck and tucked his hands behind his back instead. "Apologies. Please feel free to leave." 

Except McCullum didn't leave. He sat there on Jonathan's stool with his hands on his parted thighs and his eyebrows raised sardonically. "So, that's it?" he said. 

"Was there something else you wanted?"

"You're a fool, Reid." 

"You're very flattering, Geoffrey." 

"I tell the truth." His mouth twisted. He bared his teeth for a second. "Most of the time, I tell the truth. The truth's not usually flattering."

"Most of the time?"

McCullum sighed. He shook his head with an exasperated glance toward the ceiling, then he rubbed his now no longer prickly face. He looked back down at Jonathan. He met his gaze. 

"Do you expect me to walk home like this?" he asked. He gestured in the direction of the predicament that had quite literally arisen between his thighs.

"I expect you're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself."

McCullum arched his eyebrows at him. Then, he proceeded to do precisely that. 

It wasn't quite what Jonathan had had in mind when he'd made his rather careless assertion, he had to admit, but he also couldn't say it didn't follow his logic. When McCullum stood and unbuckled his belt, when he pushed his trousers down to his knees and then hopped back up onto the stool with a curse under his breath at the chill of it against his now entirely bare arse, when he took his manhood in one hand and stroked it firmly while Jonathan's eyes went a little wider than expected, he couldn't say that wasn't _taking care of himself_. 

He watched him. Which he knew he shouldn't do but McCullum was evidently trying to make a point and so, he thought, perhaps the polite thing to do was to let him. The issue was, of course, it didn't feel entirely _polite_. He watched McCullum stroke himself, while he felt his own prick begin to strain against the fabric of his trousers - that wasn't polite. He watched him push the thick head through the ring formed by his hand, watched him easing back his foreskin to reveal the flushed, moist tip beneath, until McCullum sighed again and came down from the stool. McCullum shuffled over to him, holding his trousers with one hand to keep them from falling down along the way and holding his shirt up with the other. He got one hand to the back of Jonathan's neck - he wasn't sure whether he left the shirt go or the trousers - and he pulled him down. He kissed him. Then he brought Jonathan's chilly hand down to his seemingly near-molten erection, and when he stepped back toward the stool, he took him with him. 

"Come here, Reid," he said, then he patted the top of the stool. "Sit down." So Jonathan did as he was told, and the irony of their reversal was very far from lost on him. It didn't seem lost on McCullum, either, judging by the wiked half-smile he gave him.

It didn't take long. Once Jonathan's trousers had been unclipped from their braces and pushed down around his knees, once his shirt had been tucked up beneath his waistcoat and McCullum had stepped in between his thighs to slide his cock up against his, it didn't take long. McCullum rested one hand at Jonathan's shoulder and wrapped his other hand around them both, as far as rough fingers and thumb would stretch; Jonathan's hands held him steady at his ribcage, feeling it shift against his palms with each laboured breath he took. He watched his face, the way he bared his teeth and breathed through them as he met Jonathan's eyes. His hand gripped tighter at Jonathan's shoulder, but he couldn't say he minded how his fingertips dug in. He just pressed his feet to the crossbar of the stool upon which he was perching and tried very hard not to bare his fangs as he rocked his hips against McCullum's grasp. It didn't take long: Jonathan came first, over McCullum's hand, and his ejaculate just eased the way for McCullum to increase his pace. A minute or two later, their gazes still disconcertingly locked, McCullum groaned and finished, too.

He brought both hands up to McCullum's smooth jaw. He drew him in. He kissed him, breathlessly, still not entirely sure how this had happened. And, afterwards, when they drew apart, he was very glad for the bowl of slightly soapy, cooling water he'd left out on his bench, and the cloth he used to clean them both up. 

McCullum tucked himself in, so Jonathan did likewise. McCullum tied his cravat around his neck and put on his coat. Then he strode back over to him, took him by his waistcoat and leaned in extremely close. 

"Let me let you in on a secret, Reid," McCullum said, by Jonathan's ear. 

His breath tickled. Jonathan shivered. "What secret would that be?" he asked.

"You can't practice for mesmerism. It works more often than not."

"You knew it would work?"

"Let's just say I didn't know it wouldn't." 

He gave him a wink as he pulled back. And then he turned and walked away, out of the door and down the corridor. He left the door open behind him, infuriating as ever, but Jonathan laughed as he sat back down on his stool. He supposed at least now he understood: it seemed his attention hadn't gone unnoticed after all, nor had it been unreciprocated. 

McCullum was thoroughly infuriating. And Jonathan looked forward to his next visit more than ever.


End file.
